The .longremark and .endremark statements are an optional pair that specify a lengthy description of the report. Indicate the start of the block of descriptive text with the .longremark statement and denote the end of the block with the .endremark statement. This long description appears in the Save frame and MoreInfo display of the Catalog frame in RBF.

The long remark differs from a Report-Writer comment (/* comment text */). Report-Writer stores the descriptive text in the .longremark statement in the database when you save the report with the sreport command, so that it is thereafter available to other Ingres application development tools. By contrast, you can only save Report-Writer comments in the text file. The sreport command ignores comments of this type and does not save them in the database.

There can be only one .longremark statement in a report specification. Should you attempt to enter two .longremark statements in one report specification, the second is flagged with a syntax error. You can enter as much remark text as you like. However, only the first 600 characters of remark text is saved in the DBMS and appear in the RBF windows; the rest is ignored. Report-Writer ignores leading spaces that separate the .longremark statement from the first character of the remark text. Tab characters convert to blank characters.